Residents of north Sinai burn tires on a desert road in late September to protest the arrest and detainment of citizens by Egyptian police. / Sarah Lynch for USA TODAY

by Sarah Lynch, Special for USA TODAY

by Sarah Lynch, Special for USA TODAY

AL-MOQATTA, Sinai â?? Egyptian security forces poured into this barren town after 16 border guards were killed by jihadists in an attack on a border post.

The raid was part of "Operation Eagle," an Egyptian military campaign that the army said wiped out the "criminal elements" responsible for numerous attacks in this sparsely populated land of desert and mountains that borders Israel.

But the people of this remote desert town not far from the border with Israel say that didn't happen. They say the security forces roughed up innocent people around a neighborhood mosque and left.

"They covered my eyes and tied my hands with rope and hit me," said Khaled Abdel Malek Moharib, who was one of 10 men arrested in the town. "The police asked me about the mosque and who prays in the mosque."

The Sinai Peninsula has become a base for arms smugglers and a way station for jihadists from Egypt and the Middle East looking to launch attacks on Israel, security experts say. The Bedouins who live here say the problem persists and apart from a few ineffective raids, the elected government of Egypt, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, is doing little to stop it.

"Operation Eagle is an eagle with clipped wings," said Ehud Yaari of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. "It's no longer a question of capability; it's a question of determination."

Egyptian security forces in Sinai were on high alert Monday after an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip two days earlier killed the commander of jihadist group Tawhid wal Jihad, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.

'They're all over Sinai'

Fought over in three wars between Israel and Egypt, Sinai was made a demilitarized zone following a peace agreement between the two nations and the Bedouin tribes that have resided here for centuries have seen little government presence since.

Militancy is not new to the area.

In October 2004, bomb attacks targeting tourist hotels killed 34 people in Taba.

In July 2005, the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh was attacked with bombs at a market and hotel, killing 88 people.

In April 2006, a series of three bombs exploded in tourist areas of the resort city of Dahab. At least 23 people were killed.

In recent months, militants have launched bold attacks on Egyptian installations and security in what appears in some cases to be an attempt to open a new jihadist front against Israel from Egypt, experts say.

Since early last year, militants have sabotaged the Arab Gas Pipeline at least 12 times, forcing its closure for sometimes days or months. The pipeline delivers natural gas to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

Though the peace deal 37 years ago between Israel and Egypt bars large numbers of troops in the Sinai, Israel has given its assent to Operation Eagle, a military campaign launched in August to restore security.

Bedouin businessman Nassir Abou Akar says as many as 1,000 jihadists are operating in the peninsula.

"They're all over Sinai, from east to west," he said.

Palestinians lead some of the groups, and recruits appear to include Egyptians from outside Sinai, Bedouin, and Arabs from around the region, experts said.

The Egyptian government has long neglected Sinai's more than 300,000 indigenous Bedouin who have been marginalized by the state and believe they are treated as second-class citizens. With few economic opportunities, many have turned to illegal arms trading or smuggling. Locals say every Bedouin home is armed.

Attacks on Egyptian outposts elicited little response until Aug. 5, when militants attacked the border post during Ramadan. They killed 16 guards and seized two armored vehicles that they tried to rush through the Israeli border. One vehicle blew up, the other was stopped by Israeli gunfire and six attackers killed.

No group took responsibility for the attack, but Egypt's MENA news agency said that the attackers were jihadists who had "infiltrated from Gaza through tunnels."

Then an organization called Ansar Bait Al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for a Sept. 21 cross-border attack that killed an Israeli soldier. The group said it was behind an attack on the Arab Gas Pipeline, and the firing of rockets into Israel's southern city of Eilat in August.

"This group is trying to serve as an umbrella for different Salafi-jihadi factions, which already operate in Sinai under different names," Yaari said, adding that Ansar Bait Al-Maqdis is the most significant group of its kind in the peninsula.

Yaari says there are newly established links between some Salafi jihadists in Sinai and al-Qaeda in Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula, considered by the Pentagon to be perhaps the most dangerous al-Qaeda branch.

Ansar al-Jihad and Mujahedeen Shura Council in Sinai claim affiliation with al-Qaeda. Leaflets circulated last year stated a new al-Qaeda chapter opened in the peninsula. In 2011, al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahri praised attacks.

It is difficult to pinpoint the ultimate goals of Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, made up of fewer than a hundred militants and other groups, said Omar Ashour, visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, a research center.

"When you say â?¦ what are (they) going to achieve? There is no clear answer," Ashour said.

And despite the growth in jihadist groups, "there are few further signs of an al-Qaeda state, or even a coherent, armed Islamist movement in the peninsula," wrote Nicolas Pelham in a report last month for Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London.

The Egyptian military reported in early September that it killed 32 "criminal elements," and Ashour said Operation Eagle disarmed some elements and eliminated some of the figures involved in the Rafah border post attack that killed 16 Egyptian border guards in early August. People here say the Egyptian authorities killed only five militants and captured one.

One reason for the growth in militancy and Egypt's failure to arrest it is that jihadist groups are sheltered by some in the Bedouin population who are heavily armed with weapons from Sudan and Libya, said Shlomo Brom of the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank in Tel Aviv.

"It will be a difficult military challenge because this population is armed to its teeth and because of the financial cost of dealing with the socioeconomic problems of this population, which is the source of much of the struggle," Brom said.

Ahmed Ibrahim, a Bedouin farmer in north Sinai and member of the powerful Sawarka tribe, said he is acquainted with several local Bedouin who "have the program of jihad."

"In 2004, they were very normal people," Ibrahim said of the Bedouin he suspects are jihadists. But they were arrested that year in a security crackdown after the bombing attacks and imprisoned under then-dictator Hosni Mubarak's government. They adopted radical beliefs shared by individuals they met in jail, Ibrahim said.

Recently elected President Mohamed Morsi, a longtime member of the Muslim Brotherhood, approved of the crackdown in the Sinai. But at the same time, he has overseen the pardoning of several jihadists imprisoned by Mubarak.

In September, Mostafa Hamza, a leader of the terrorist group Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya, was freed from an Egyptian prison. He had been accused of involvement in the massacre of 60 foreign tourists in Luxor in 1997 and the attempted assassination of Mubarak in 1995. He had been imprisoned for eight years.

Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad has also been set free. A member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, he spent time training in Afghanistan and in Sudan and was jailed for nine years without trial.

Morsi has been careful not to be seen as imposing heavy-handed security methods like those used under Mubarak, which bred resentment among Egyptians and especially Bedouins in Sinai, where tribal politics are strong. But going too easy may embolden jihadists, say experts.

If Egypt remains absent from the Sinai, jihadists will "have a whole range of targets to hit" including the airport in Eilat and targets on the Suez Canal, Yaari, of Washington Institute, said.

Still, many complain that the authorities are arresting innocent people, that Operation Eagle is poorly planned and the military's methods are "random."

"Forget about security in the Sinai until there is development," said Abou Hamad, who identifies himself as a former weapons smuggler and lives in a mansion in the barren desert not far Egypt's border with Israel. "There is no state â?¦ The government isn't here at all."